A few days ago, I was downloading from The Sims 3 Store, but the items I bought wouldn't download. I figured out that this was probably because I needed to update my game. I installed Origin, pressed "check for new updates" from the Sims 3 launcher, and was then prompted to install the new patches. I tried to install the patch about 3 times this way, and each time it would completely finish but then give me an error message telling me that I had The Sims open and I needed to close it before the patch could be properly installed. I did not have any Sims program open at all in my task manager's processes. So after this, I decide to try and download the "Super Patch" from the official EA website. I tried to download it two times, and it failed both times. While I was doing all these updates, I had started them from the Sims 3 Launcher, but I had started the launcher from the World Adventures expansion pack, so I thought that might be why the patch wasn't installing, and I replaced the WA disc with the base game disc.
Once I put the base game disc in my computer, it started making me re-install the base game, so I did. But after I installed it, I tried starting the launcher from the base game (about 15 times), and each time it would just automatically tell me that the launcher had crashed, even when I ran it as an administrator. So I thought this might be because I had an updated and re-installed version of the base game, but not my WA expansion, so I popped in the WA disc again and tried to re-install that game too. It was going well at first, until a message came up telling me "The Sims3 needs to be updated before this product can be installed. Setup will now attempt to update the Sims3. Do you want to continue" I pressed yes, but then an error message told me "Error with the Sims 3 update. Setup is unable to continue.", I tried re-installing WA about 5 times, and this was the message I got each time.
I ended up just giving up and going to Programs and Features to uninstall it (I also uninstalled Origin, which uninstalled with no problems). I pressed the uninstall button, but then it gave me an error message that said something like "error uninstalling: 5005 : 0x8000ffff" and some other stuff that I don't remember. So I just went into my documents and deleted the Electronic Arts folder, and I also deleted it from my program files, and any other trace of it I could find on my computer. I went back into Programs and Features and tried uninstalling it again, but to no avail, I got the same error. I restarted my system after that, but again, I got the same error.
I tried putting the base game disc in again, just to see if I could install it that way, but when the autoplay box comes up, the icons look weird: http://i.imgur.com/mGv8DNn.jpg Normally, the icon for the "Run Autorun.exe" would be a picture of TS3 logo, but now it's just strange looking.
Also, when I press the "Run Autorun.exe" it does nothing. So I pressed the "Open folders to view files" instead, and from there I clicked on "Sims3Setup": http://i.imgur.com/n3h67Qg.jpg
When I clicked on that, it brought up this message: http://i.imgur.com/0qbE7sC.jpg asking me if I want to REMOVE the program, what the heck?!
So where I'm at now, I read the EA's page giving instructions on how to manually uninstall TS3 https://help.ea.com/article/manually-uninstalling-the-sims-3
But I'm nervous to try deleting the registry keys, because since I deleted all the Electronic Arts and The Sims 3 folders earlier, I'm not sure if those files will still be there or not, and I do NOT want to risk screwing up my computer.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. And in case anyone needs to know, I'm running Windows 7 64 bit, and yes everything is up to date.
